Monthly Archives: March 2017

​Rally round the flag. One Britain. Undivisible. The rhetoric from the Tories is one of right wing British Nationalism. In a world where Britain is portrayed in the right wing press such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Express as being at loggerheads with the EU and under threat from Muslim Extremism, and at risk of losing control of Scotland and Northern Ireland, it’s easy to simply wave the flag, demand unity in the face of adversity and to slyly coax people to put their differences aside, invoking the Dunkirk spirit and “Our Boys” imagery to do so.
As politics go, these are legitimate tactics.
But is it not up to us to see through the jingoism and rhetoric and to point out what is coming through the back door unseen?
The Tories are undoubtedly purveyors of avarice and enemies of the working people. Friends to big business, to shareholders and financiers, to arms dealers and privateers, the working people of Britain are nothing but fodder to be be fed to big business and discarded when no longer productive.

The sick, the disabled and those too old or infirm to work are a burden, to be managed at the lowest cost, in the most degrading and inhuman way possible. State assets are seen as short term generators of profit to prop up failing budgets; to be sold off to any bidder who’ll join in the crusade to strip workers of rights, and to reduce the ordinary working folk to commodities, minimum wage slave labour to generate profit for the shareholders.
Look around you and tell me you DON’T know people who have been shafted by them. How many of you see people unable to afford prescriptions and being forced to choose which of the drugs they need to keep them alive they can afford? How many of you see pensioners robbed of their dignity before being robbed of their savings and their homes to pay for “care” where they are treated like animals, fed on slops on a 36p a day budget, while the profits run into the fat cats pockets?

You see schools struggle with budget cuts, education suffer, libraries close, dirty streets strewn with litter that no one has the money to pick up, meanwhile private companies rob the public purse with inflated contracts where they spend other peoples money without a second thought, because they can always put the squeeze on them some more.

And all the time the bankers get greedier, the fat cats get fatter and the Daily Mail blames the immigrants and the unemployed and tells you to keep voting Tory.
I am bewildered how after all these years the working class of this country seem blind to how Thatcherism is alive and well and living in Westminster. I am bewildered how the working class of this country seem so willing to turn a blind eye to the rotten beating heart at the core of the Tory party. I am bewildered at how so many people are willing to ignore all that they have done, because they are waving the flag. The “I’m alright jack brigade” now hold sway.
Some of you are doing alright. Compared to some you have good wages and compared to some you have reasonable conditions. But they are under threat from a party that wants to rip every last one from you. When you vote Tory you sell out everyone in this country who is struggling, everyone who needs a hand from the system, everyone who hasn’t had the breaks that many of us have.
Above all, when you vote Tory the person you sell out most of all is yourself.

There has been a lot of xenophobic sentiment displayed over the last few years in England and this has led us to the point where it is highly likely there will be a referendum on whether Scotland wishes to be an independent nation and EU member or a region of Britain outside of Europe. Last week I was unfortunate enough to see a video released by the British Nationalist campaign group Scotland in Union in which former football commentator Archie McPherson stated that he did not want to see Scotland as a normal country which runs its own affairs as this would make friends and family in England “foreigners”. Unlike Archie, I have no fear of “foreigners”. Over the last few years I have been very lucky to travel across Europe, to France and Italy and more recently to Denmark and Sweden and have to admit that we have much to learn from these countries but we also have much to offer in return. The freedom to move and travel across Europe with the same ease as if I were to travel to Glasgow or Inverness is one which I value and do not wish to see thrown away.

In this weeks Advertiser Elaine Smith MSP complained about how our railways are in private hands and that they are now a “cash cow for Dutch state-owned Abellio” and that they are “passing profits abroad”. I fully agree that our railways should be nationalised, but why does Ms Smith draw attention to which country that money will go to? There are numerous privatised Train Operating Companies operating in Scotland, Arriva and Virgin to name two which aren’t foreign owned, yet Ms Smith specifically singles out the one where the privatised profits don’t go into British pockets. Alluding to foreign companies taking “our” money might resonate with some, but not me. If privatisation of public services is wrong then make your case on that basis Elaine. Not by the nationality of the pocket the money ends up in.

On Question Time last night a lady piped up with her opinion which received rapturous applause from the audience in Bognor Regis: Why are the Scots demanding a referendum now, because when they voted in 2014 they KNEW there was going to be a Brexit vote.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard this stated. It’s nonsense of course and anyone with decent powers of recall or even better, access to google should be able to establish a few basic facts. But let’s give the good lady from Bognor the benefit of the doubt and say she wasn’t following the situation in this country as closely as we were here and look at just why she’s mistaken.
Joanna Cherry MP had a decent stab at addressing all the points put to her and to be honest it could have been an hour long show with just Ms Cherry, David Dimbleby and the audience of Bognor Regis, but the question above was one she didn’t respond to and in my view should have.
In the lead up to the September 2014 referendum Scots were being told by the print, radio and television media and by Labour politicians that if they voted No a Labour government was just round the corner. That if they voted No, in less than a year they could sweep the coalition from power and that Ed Miliband would become a Prime Minister who would hold Scotland in high regard. Indeed Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson deliberately played down the Tories chances of returning to power to reassure Scots voters that they should vote for the union. I was one of many warning that this wasn’t the case; that Ed Miliband was unelectable and that the Tories would not only take power but seek to emasculate Scotland in the process. I was correct on every single point.From The Guardian, September 2014 “Ruth Davidson, the Tory leader in Scotland, highlighted fears of a yes vote when she told a cross-party referendum debate on STV on Tuesday night that the Tories are on course to lose the UK election. This was seen as an attempt to reassure wavering voters who are more likely to vote for independence if they believe the Tories will win the UK election, according to the former Labour first minister Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale.” “Citing unguarded remarks on Monday night by Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, that the Conservatives were unlikely to win the general election, Miliband will insist that Labour would win in 2015 – a year earlier than Scotland could become independent.”

But I digress. In the lead up to September 2014 the Tories were having internal rows and were under pressure from UKIP and David Cameron was floating the idea of an EU referendum to quiet the unruly within the party and to stop wavering voters from switching to UKIP. The EU referendum bill was actually introduced to the UK parliament in October 2014, just over a month after the Scottish referendum. It passed its first hurdle then floundered, before David Cameron included it as a manifesto pledge for the May 2015 election, and it was confirmed as going ahead later that month.
So in the pre-Indyref campaign the possibility of an EU referendum was certainly there, but it was being played down in Scotland by the Tories, Labour and the Lib-Dems, with all three campaigning on the same message: voting Yes was a sure fire way of taking Scotland OUT of Europe.

At the Labour Party (Scotland Branch) conference in March 2014, Margaret Curran made a conference speech in which she said:“Because Alex Salmond knows Scots don’t really want independence. What they want is a Labour Prime Minister and a Labour Government. And rest assured, Conference, Alex Salmond know that his biggest threat is Ed Miliband is throwing David Cameron out of number 10.”

While the main thrust of the No campaign was squarely behind the Project Fear approach the one positive aspect that they did try to sell was a tenuous house of cards. If any one aspect was removed it all fell apart. Everything hinged on No winning, then hapless Ed Miliband winning the general election, so that there would be no EU referendum. Even the dog’s in the street could see that Ed was the weakest link in that chain, yet he was talked up by Labour as the best of both world’s. And still no one was willing to admit what anyone with any sense could see: that he was a short term solution to a long term problem, and that even had he by some miracle won that the Tories at some point would be back, vindictive as ever. The plan fell at the second hurdle and left Scotland facing another Tory government.
As we saw afterwards, once Scotland was secured within the union, focus returned to Europe. The Conservatives, ran their campaign with two major themes; that they would deliver a referendum on EU membership (which Cameron fully expected to win) and that Ed Miliband would be a puppet Prime Minister worked from the back by Alex Salmond. Having told Scotland it would be a valued and equal partner, within months Scotland was the enemy within, and while Labour tried to blame their loss of seats to the SNP for their defeat, simple mathematics showed that Labour had been roundly defeated by over a hundred seats and even had they retained their Scottish seats would still be languishing effectively a million miles behind the Tories.
Having brought in English Votes for English Laws which stripped Scottish MP’s of some voting rights the UK parliament has now moved to reduce Scottish MP’s by scrapping 6 seats. With a now tried and proven system in place for the election in the form of whipping up anti-Scottish sentiment and insinuating that Labour will (if they remain as one party) enter coalition with the SNP to deny the English electorate their rightful government, we have a recipe for Tory government in Scotland for years to come. So if there’s a way out of Brexit and from another lost generation of Tory rule, I’d grab it. Margaret Curran might think otherwise though…

Edited to add: Murdo Fraser caught red handed trying the same line with Andrew Neil today…

“Why would you want to leave one union to be ruled by another in Brussels?” asked an audience member on Question Time last night… “because you can’t be independent in the EU”.

Unfortunately David Dimbleby didn’t allow Joanna Cherry MP to respond to that particular point, but it’s one that needs addressed.

The idea that the UK is a benevolent “partnership” while the EU is an overbearing dictatorship seems to strike a chord with some people, however this avoids one blatantly obvious point.

When the UK wanted to hold a referendum on EU membership the UK held a referendum. It didn’t have to seek permission. Because it is a sovereign nation.

When Scotland stated it’s intention to hold another referendum on UK membership it has to seek permission, because it’s not a sovereign nation. It has to ask the permission of the largest nation in the “partnership”. And that nation said No.

So the idea that Scotland would be recovering it’s sovereignty only to “hand it back to Brussels” is one of the greatest fallacies of the whole debate, and one which may have to keep countering for some time to come. “Luckily” Theresa May has given us a blatant example of this in practice. Lucky us, eh?